Artificial Intelligence: Genuine Style

Difficult to define and reputed to be impossible to buy, style is a thoroughly human concept that is loaded with emotion, subjectivity and fluidity. The plethora of subtle nuances that make up our concept of 'style' would seem to put it outside the scope of AI but prepare to be surprised by the results of a brand new study...

The small yet revealing study was carried out by Intelistyle, a startup company based in London. Experts at Intelistyle have produced a cutting-edge AI application designed to display fashionable styles or 'looks', which are created entirely by a purpose-designed algorithm.

Choosing London Fashion Week as the ideal time to road-test the app, Intelistyle asked 27 bloggers, influencers and fashionistas to look at photographs of two different outfits at once, before choosing the look that they 'preferred the style of'. One of each pair of outfits was taken from Instagram feeds of fashion influencers while the other was derived by AI on Intelistyle's app: respondents were not told from where the images were sourced.

Though the sample size of the study was relatively small, the results were telling: a full 70% of the respondents preferred the style of the look generated by AI. What the results clearly show is that AI is quickly becoming a real force to be reckoned with in the retail sector, a trend which seems likely to continue.